When Rita Ramakrishnan first launched her executive coaching firm, Ixana Consulting, not all the new skills she needed to develop came easily. As a self-employed person with autism and ADHD, certain basic tasks of running a business were more difficult for her than for some of her colleagues.
“Anything that required you to follow a specific schedule, that required a lot of organization, those were really difficult,” she told Business Insider.
Ramakrishnan said artificial intelligence has helped her get the help she needs to survive solo. “AI becomes my external executive function, filling in the parts of my brain that aren’t working well, so I can focus more on what AI does well,” Ramakrishnan said.
Since integrating AI into her workflow over the past year, she has grown her business revenue while still a graduate student.
“I don’t think enough people are talking about how AI is opening up market opportunities for neurodiverse people.”
Ramakrishnan and another neurodivergent solopreneur, Chris Haddox, founder of clothing brand DECOY LTD, shared specific ways they have integrated AI to streamline work processes.
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AI helps with task and energy management
Ramakrishnan’s AI workflow starts first thing in the morning, throwing everything in his head into Anthropic’s Claude or Google’s Gemini and letting the generative AI tools sort it out.
“It helps you move from a cluttered place first thing in the morning to a well-rounded and organized place.”
She uses a similar process when starting a project for a new client, inputting their unstructured thoughts into an AI chat and asking them to compile them into a thoughtful project plan.
From there, it transfers the information to the productivity tool Motion. This allows you to schedule reminders and add tasks to your calendar.
Beyond basic task management, Ramakrishnan uses AI to map out the energy fluctuations she experiences throughout the day as a neurodivergent person. “I know when to schedule based on when my energy levels are high and low, and the types of tasks that I like and dislike very much that give me more energy,” she said.
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To do this, Ramakrishnan asked Claude and Gemini to record their daily energy for several weeks. She then built a custom project with each tool based on how the energy patterns were synthesized. Ramakrishnan said you will now be able to drop tasks into each LLM and each LLM will suggest the best time for you. “For example, if I need to write a proposal, I find that Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons are the best times,” she says.
AI helps founders stay focused and organize information
Although Haddox, the founder of DECOY LTD., intentionally avoids using AI for the creative and artistic aspects of his work, he has found it helpful in helping him stay on track as a solopreneur with ADHD.
“For me, it’s hard to stay focused on one train of thought. It’s very easy to start out wanting to solve one task and then end up wanting to dabble in everything that’s in front of you,” Haddox said.
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He said talking to others can help you stay focused, but after-parties aren’t always available, so interacting with AI can help fill that gap. For example, he might go to Claude with a technical bug and remind him about solutions that have worked in the past, industry best practices he didn’t know about otherwise, or additional questions he didn’t think to ask. “I’m certainly more organized in my thoughts than I’ve ever been,” he told Business Insider.
He said he feels this is especially valuable for those who juggle a full-time job with running a business on the side. “It’s really helpful to be able to go home after work and pick up where I left off, probably last week, without any errors,” he says.
AI helps you prepare for sales and networking
AI is also helping Ramakrishnan improve the one-on-one human conversations he needs to grow his business.
“Put me in a coaching session and I’ll be the best version of myself. Put me in a sales conversation and I’ll be a clumsy turtle, and that’s the story of autism,” she said.
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To grow their business, they knew they needed to improve these types of call interactions, so they used AI to aggregate online information about the people they were meeting with and rehearsed different scenarios to market their services.
“My autistic brain loves data,” Ramakrishnan said, adding that the research has given her peace of mind and increased her ability to somewhat predict what people need and empathize with what they’re going through. She said she uses the same process to prepare for conferences and meetings.
“We’re not using AI to be more productive. We’re using AI to stop punishing ourselves for how our brains work,” Ramakrishnan said.
